My thoughts from 30 yrs in the real estate industry. Tip 1: Contact your broker, don’t wait for them to contact you – Good properties always sell even in a tough market. Your ability to buy the best properties that tick all of your boxes comes down to the relationships you have with the local brokers, so take the lead and make sure they always think of you first when they become aware of that perfect property. Tip 2: Buy when you can afford to buy – You will never get: (1) High growth,…

In recent months Professor Keith Woodford has received many emails asking if he has seen the RethinkX report demonstrating how in ten years’ time animal proteins will have been largely replaced by artificial foods. By 2030, demand for cattle products will supposedly have fallen by 70%. At that time the global grasslands can be returned to nature. This is his response. Then this last week the emailers have been asking if I have seen George Monbiot’s report in The Guardian on how artificial foods…

Most of the opinion polls tell us that after government corruption high inflation is the public’s Number One worry shortly followed by insecurity. We shouldn’t need the pollsters to tell us that. We can listen to the complaints in the lines at the supermarkets, read the headlines in newspapers, or hear the pronouncements of business leaders and political candidates. Inflation is terrible cancer that must be brought under control, we are constantly warned, or we face a bleak future and perhaps an economic…

The average return reached 2.8% this year meaning it takes 36 years to recoup the investment. Selling prices dropped in 87% of the city neighbourhoods The profitability of the properties continues its downward path and, with an average of 2.8% a year, reaching a new all-time low, according to a report prepared by ZonaProp. The survey highlights that the devaluation of the peso in August caused the price of rents measured in dollars to fall sharply. Although the sale value of the properties declined, this was…

So you want to be a farmer in South America. Investing in farmland can make for an intriguing alternative to the stock market. Farmland is safe historically and a great hedge against inflation and is an asset class that does not correlate with the normal stock market. As the world’s population continues to grow (9.15 billion estimates by 2050) and the global middle-class continues to emerge (with changing dietary habits toward more calories and meat), farmland is poised to become an even more intriguing alternative…

What a difference a decade makes. Back in September 2010, Guido Mantega, Brazil’s then-finance minister, was complaining bitterly about “currency wars”, and claiming the Federal Reserve’s ultra-loose monetary policy of the time was unfairly hurting his economy. “We’re in the midst of an international currency war, a general weakening of the currency,” he said then. “This threatens us because it takes away our competitiveness.” Fast forward to December 2019,…

Argentina’s Martin Guzman, a whiz-kid economist with close ties to influential U.S. economist Joseph Stiglitz, will bring a sharp academic intellect but little policy-making experience to the daunting task of reviving Latin America’s third-largest economy and averting a damaging default. Guzman, a debt specialist at Columbia who has a doctorate from Brown University, was confirmed as economy minister on Friday evening in the new cabinet of President-elect Alberto Fernandez, who takes office on Dec. 10.…

It is often said that politics is theatre. This has been especially true during the past four years in Argentina, which has been a high-stakes melodrama along Kafkaesquelines, redolent with existential anxiety, alienation, and absurdity. The convoluted plot sees the ruling President Mauricio Macri and his coterie of media magnates and partisan judges trying to bury the immediate past president, Cristina Kirchner, in vexatious criminal prosecutions and relentless calumny. But when their neoliberal economic policies…

On October 28, 2019 voters in Argentina elected Alberto Fernandez, a political ally of controversial former President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, to replace Mauricio Macri, a business-friendly centrist, in the country’s executive office. The election marks a return to power for Argentina’s left and an uncertain path forward as the country still faces a number of long-term challenges. On December 10 Fernandez will take over as Argentina’s president. Foreign investors are still waiting to see the…

Average transaction values fell 18.8% in US dollars, which could be an indication of the lower prices The real estate sector continued its 17th year-on-year fall in October after it was obvious the market-friendly government of Mauricio Marci was going to be replaced by the earlier corruption-ridden one of Christine Kirchner. According to the Colegio de Escribanos porteño, last month 3,152 settlements. This represents a drop of 14.1% from October 2018. However, against September purchases were up 9.8% from…

There are two reasons. To speed up the selling time and maximise the properties value Current Market Realities South American real estate markets are in the main lightly regulated and highly informal. What this means for vendors is they are at a strong disadvantage when they come to selling a property within a reasonable time frame. Traditional times of sale are measured in months and years. Consequently, transaction costs are among the highest in the world. With the globalization of real estate GTSA…

Accounting studios are increasingly receiving “emotional” inquiries from their most wealthy clients due to a change of government which has a reputation for hurting the upper middle classes. One option for savers or property owners is to obtain residency in Uruguay and renounce Argentina residency or form an irrevocable long-term trust and lose direct control over the money altogether. “The vast majority of consultations are for achieving an Uruguayan residency and losing their Argentine one.…

Argentine has sent its first shipment of chilled pork to China, the government of the South American farming powerhouse said on Wednesday, as China’s pork imports rise due to a devastating outbreak of African swine fever at home. The shipment included 26 tons of pork cuts, according to a statement from the Agriculture Ministry in Buenos Aires. “This step further consolidates our livestock sector on the world market,” the statement said. Argentina announced it had clinched a deal in April to…

Sunday’s presidential elections in Argentina and Uruguay revealed an anti-incumbent mood in the electorate. In Argentina, voters punished Mauricio Macri, the market-friendly president, who dramatically failed to live up to his promises of economic growth. Across the Río Uruguay, Daniel Martínez, from the incumbent center-left Broad Front coalition in power since 2004, won a plurality of votes but will face a strengthened opposition in the second-round election next November, which he might lose. Regardless…

Two thousand kilometres from Buenos Aires, a field of tulips nestled between snowy mountains and crystal clear mountain stream waters draws a rainbow of 27 colours that are impossible to forget. The fields of tulips attract visitors from Tierra del Fuego to Chaco, from Holland to the United Kingdom, lovers of flowers here find a unique charm since the plants are surrounded by a cordon of the Andes mountain range, known as the Trono de Nubes (Throne of Clouds) A descendant of Welsh immigrants – Juan Carlos…